"These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes or noblesse, that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at 3 o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. . . . The tea was served out of a majestic Delft tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this tea-pot from a huge copper tea-kettle. . . . To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table by a string from the ceiling, so that it should be swung from mouth to mouth--an ingenious expedient which is still kept up by some families in Albany, but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages. "At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting or coquetin gambu of old ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones, no self satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woolen stockings, nor ever opened their lips except to say "yaw, mynherr," or "yaw, yaw, Vrouw," to any question that was asked them, behaving in all things like decent, well educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fire-places were decorated, wherein sundry passages of scripture were piously portrayed."